“A Cryptic Sign” by Denise Levertov

August. The woods are silent.
No sway of treetops, no skitter of squirrels,
no startled bird. Sky fragments
in rifts of canopy,
palest silken blue.
In the crook
of an old and tattered snag
something gleams amid the stillness,
drawing the gaze: some bit of heartwood
so long exposed, weather and time
have polished it, as centuries
of awed lips, touching
a hand of stone, rub it
to somber gleaming.